About Missoula County, MT

Wordless Wednesday - Welcome to My Branch

Bald Eagles are a frequent sight along the Clark Fork River. They seem to come back to the same areas so we know where to look for them and enjoy seeing them on our drive. We loved that he was sharing his branch with a crow - that was the first time we've seen that!

Here's Another Bald Eagle Photo that Kevin took at a different time.

Photo by Kevin Ray

Hope to See You at this Year's Missoula Parade of Homes September 17-20, 2009

We always look forward to attending the Missoula Building Industry Association's Parade of Homes and Remodeling Tour. This year is the 20th anniversary and promises to be one of the best Parades yet.

They are featuring eight homes throughout the Missoula valley this year with prices ranging from $190,000 to $1.5 million, giving you plenty of inspiration for whatever your budget is. This year's Parade will feature a wide variety of enticing ideas to work into your dream home.

Missoula Parade of Homes 2009
Dates: Sept. 17-20, 2009

Tickets are on sale Sept. 4, 2009 at First Security Bank, Vann's in Missoula and Hamilton, Missoulian and BMC West and are $8 in advance or $10 at the door.

For more information on this year's event, visit www.BuildMissoula.com.

Photos and Information about Last Year's Missoula Parade of Homes

Missoula Real Estate Market Update - August 1, 2009

During the month of July, Missoula saw a dip in the median home price on homes that were sold during the month. For the year, however, that decrease is low. In the Missoula real estate market the median price is down only about 1% as compared to other areas of the country that saw a significant drop in home prices.

There is a lot for buyers to choose from on the market currently which does indicate a buyer's market. Active listings are up about 25% at the end of August compared to the end of January. And foreclosures account for about 14% of that market (compared to 50% and higher in some of the most distressed markets).

There are reasons for optimism that the Missoula real estate market has stabilized including an increase in sales activity during the month of August and the early part of September, including increased calls and showing.

Residential Market Activity in the Missoula Urban Area
(residential, AND residential with acreage)

Missoula Urban Area - Month of July

Missoula Urban Area - YTD - January 1 through July 31, 2009

Sales represent properties that have transferred and the transaction has closed. It is the best reliable indicator of what prices the real estate market will bear.

Source: Missoula Organization of Realtors (R) Market information solely from listings entered into the MOR Regional Multiple Listing Service. Therefore, figures may not reflect all real estate activity in the market.

For questions on the Missoula or Western Montana Real Estate Market, contact Access Realty at 406-822-SOLD (7653) or visit us online at www.AccessRealty.net.

I can guess, it's because someone will say something bad about you, God forbid. I'm like most of you, I don't want people bad-mouthing me online either! However, that's part of the new-world out there, web 2.0 and we'd better get on board with this before someone else does in a much more organized way.

Granted, there's a lot of details I don't feel like covering right now, however, if we as Realtors do not build a ranking/rating system that our consumers can use, then someone else will. In fact, a few have, here's a doozy of a review I read just today:

"[Agent's Name] of [Company] is a narcissistic sociopath that will say and do anything. Be careful of her an your money."

Want another? Ohh boy, I've got more:

"How can I get information on how to pursue a LAW SUIT against [agent & company]. I have a lot of evidence on how this firm treats people. If anybody knows, please let me know. I would also like to report him. Anybody have his Realtor #"

Ouch. What was interesting was that the site I pulled these reviews from had it's 50 most recent ratings posted, guess how many were negative? Twelve, less than 1/4 total, most were positive! So it would appear from this small sample that most people actually want to provide positive reviews online.

Lets dive further into the issue with negative feedback. Yeah it sucks, especially when people say stuff that's way out there. However this type of feedback has it's advantages; first of all reasonable negative remarks allow us to improve our business, that's a good thing. Second, if an agent truly is that bad of a person, isn't it best for our association to weed out bad eggs anyways?

So fellow agents, lets please get on board with rankings and ratings. Talk to your board leadership to get something underway, the nice thing about if your association has control over the ratings system is you can filter the incredibly crazy remarks. Your board can filter the totally insane stuff or the remarks that don't have anything to actually do with your professionalism.

Zero Down!!! Buy! Buy! Buy!

Amongst the firestorm of the market collapse and lending rules buying houses with zero-down money seemed to be one of the main punching bags for many people. Heck, it was for me. How many Realtors have said this line, "Conventional and FHA loans haven't changed much over the last few years it's the zero-down, no income, high ratio, NINA loans that have caused this problem." And yes, that statement is true, partially, however lets look closer at the "zero-down" part.

Last week at the NAR Leadership Summit I found it very interesting to see a report about loan delinquencies. The report compared conventional, FHA, VA, and sub-prime. Naturally sub-prime was way up, nearly 1/4. FHA had a slight rise, conventional and VA a very slight uptick but were mostly flat.

NAR's chief economist pointed out in the data that it's really interesting to see the VA has not seen a big rise in delinquencies. As most of us professionals know, VA is well known for it's zero-down option for veteran buyers. What was pointed out was that the lack of issues with VA loans shows that zero-down financing simply was not/is not the problem in financing issues.

That made quite the impression on me, zero-down financing is not the issue, obviously it was the incredibly relaxed standards of sub-prime loans. It will be interesting to see if the National Association of Realtors makes some noise with this data, I think they should.